Rigorhttp://rigor.com
Digital Experience Monitoring and OptimizationWed, 21 Feb 2018 16:34:22 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4eCommerce & Retail: There’s No Excuse to Ignore Performancehttp://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/ecommerce-retail-theres-no-excuse-ignore-performance
http://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/ecommerce-retail-theres-no-excuse-ignore-performance#respondThu, 15 Feb 2018 15:23:52 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9968As web perfectionists, we have heard every excuse in the book for why teams cannot make web performance a priority. Whether it be time, money, or technical know how, every day we talk to eCommerce and Retail teams who explain why they aren’t monitoring their site’s performance. But with online sales continuing to skyrocket, the […]

]]>As web perfectionists, we have heard every excuse in the book for why teams cannot make web performance a priority.

Whether it be time, money, or technical know how, every day we talk to eCommerce and Retail teams who explain why they aren’t monitoring their site’s performance. But with online sales continuing to skyrocket, the truth is this: if your business generates revenue online, there is simply no excuse for ignoring or putting off performance!

Since our team is preparing for eTail West, there is no better time to address some of the common objections I’ve seen when talking to eCommerce and Retail teams about performance.

If you are one of the marketers, business users, or (*gasp*) developers who have found yourself making excuses, here is some motivation to get you started:

1.“I don’t have time or budget to dedicate to performance”

Most people assume gaining insight into their site’s performance is a huge time commitment. Sure, that can be the case. There are companies who have full-time Performance Engineers dedicated to keeping their sites fast and reliable. But there are also eCommerce and Retail teams that integrate performance into their everyday process of building and releasing new content. We think that performance should be accessible for all teams.

Not to mention that there are performance solutions on the market that actually automate the steps a performance engineer would take to identify defects on your site (cough cough Rigor Optimization). We even rank defects by severity so you can focus your time on fixing defects that will deliver the biggest performance wins.

Budget limitations are something every team deals with, but you don’t have to dedicate a hefty portion of your software budget in order to take control of your site’s performance. And the ROI that you see from improving your performance should greatly outweigh the cost of using the tool.

And if you do work for a startup or small organization with no budget for performance, there are plenty of free tools on the market you can use to run one-off performance tests until you’re able to invest.

But remember, when it comes to performance tools you get what you pay for (within reason). These free tools will give you insights on how your site is performing when the test was run, but you won’t be able to trend performance over time, test your content’s performance before it goes live, or have hands-on support to help you understand your data.

2.“I’m not technical so I can’t contribute to performance at my company”

So you don’t know how to code? I don’t either, but I set up Benchmark, Uptime, API, and Real Brower Checks every day.

There are several performance testing platforms on the market geared toward non-technical users. I even wrote a blog on how Rigor develops our software for business users. In most cases, running tests is a simple as entering the URL you need insight on.

As I mentioned before, Rigor Optimization automates the steps a performance engineer would take to identify performance defects and then walks you through step-by-step instructions on how to fix defects. Some fixes are as easy as downloading an optimized image and uploading it to your site.

3.“I know performance is important, but I don’t know where to start”

The good news is that you are aware that your site’s performance has big implications on your business’s revenue. But the old saying “ignorance is bliss” does not apply to web performance.

I think that one of our Rigor power-users, Erick Leon, at Carnival Cruise Line said it best when he said, “90% of the battle is knowing where you stand performance wise.”

It’s true, establishing where you stand today is the best place to start. Without establishing a performance baseline, you won’t know if your site is improving or getting worse over time, or if the new content on your site is degrading performance.

Once you have established this baseline, you can start making changes to your site to improve performance. A product like Rigor Optimization can make it easy for you by telling you which defects are slowing down your site the most so you can start there.

After you have made all the changes that you can, you should test new content for performance before it is released and continue to monitor how performance is changing over time.

Conclusion

Performance can be intimidating to eCommerce or Retail teams with minimal technical experiences, but it doesn’t have to be.

The good news is that you don’t have to tackle your site’s performance alone. Rigor has a team of performance evangelists who can walk you through the process and talk through which tests would be the most helpful for your business.

Are you ready to take the next step? Schedule a meeting with one of our web perfectionists today at eTail West!

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/ecommerce-retail-theres-no-excuse-ignore-performance/feed0Rigor’s Global Monitoring Network Expands with New Locationshttp://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/rigors-global-monitoring-network-expands-new-locations
http://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/rigors-global-monitoring-network-expands-new-locations#respondWed, 14 Feb 2018 14:41:19 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9942Our globally connected world means that website traffic can come from anywhere at any time. This heightens the importance of tracking performance metrics across regions, especially when you have a geographically diverse user base. With a significant expansion into the Latin American market, Rigor recently enhanced our monitoring locations to include Argentina, Chile, Mexico City, […]

]]>Our globally connected world means that website traffic can come from anywhere at any time. This heightens the importance of tracking performance metrics across regions, especially when you have a geographically diverse user base.

With a significant expansion into the Latin American market, Rigor recently enhanced our monitoring locations to include Argentina, Chile, Mexico City, as well as an additional U.S. location in Miami. So now you can monitor your users’ digital experience in even more locations.

These additional locations augment our existing global network of testing locations. A complete list of Rigor’s current monitoring stations and their IP addresses can be found in our Knowledge Base.

From equipping you to test performance metrics in pre-production to verifying performance for users around the globe, Rigor enables teams to build and deliver fast and reliable digital experiences. If you want continuous visibility into your digital users’ experience, See what you’re missing by signing up for a demo here!

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/rigors-global-monitoring-network-expands-new-locations/feed0How Rigor Shows Our Customers the Lovehttp://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/rigor-shows-customers-love
http://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/rigor-shows-customers-love#respondThu, 08 Feb 2018 15:17:31 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9924Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and while we appreciate any opportunity to consume chocolate, what we really love is our customers! They are the lifeblood of our business and the reason for our success. While flowers and gifts are nice once a year, we know that strong relationships are built through mutual trust […]

]]>Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and while we appreciate any opportunity to consume chocolate, what we really love is our customers! They are the lifeblood of our business and the reason for our success. While flowers and gifts are nice once a year, we know that strong relationships are built through mutual trust on an ongoing basis. This is why we have centered our business around our customers.

Here are four ways we show our customers that they matter to us on a regular basis.

1.Customers First is a Core Value.

At Rigor, we take our Core Values seriously. They fuel our passion, inform our decision making, and guide our business. A Customers First mentality is infused across the Rigor and means that we make every decision with our customers at the forefront.

This is one of the reasons that our product is easy-to-use and our pricing is clear–because we know that it’s important to put the customers first, even in the little things.

Part of Francis’ role is also helping us transform both practices and mindset across all departments. One of his goals is to provide every Rigor user to pull a clear report documenting the ROI from Rigor, so that our customers are able to clearly document their ROI by eliminating outages and improving application performance.

For instance, when we were approached by a customer who had an initiative to improve their load times ahead of Black Friday, we worked side-by-side with them to make fixes to their site. Through this partnership, they were able to see an 11% increase in conversions.

3. We win when our customers win.

Customer wins are a big deal for us because our success isn’t only defined by how many customers we have, but how successful they are with Rigor.

We equip our customers for success from the get-go. From implementation focused on ensuring our customers know how to maximize the value they get from Rigor to support should something go awry, our Client Success Team is dedicated to our customers.

4. Product Features

At legacy companies, investors decide the product roadmap. At Rigor, customer feedback informs our product. For instance, the Rigor Idea Exchange allows users to identify features that they’d like, and upvote the top ideas. Popular new features such as Network Throttling and our Bulk Uploader have their origins in the Idea Exchange, as do some of the features we are working on currently!

What about smaller improvements? We have a pothole initiative that increases usability of our app based on internal and external feedback. Our Engineering team diligently tackles these potholes on a routine basis, which makes Rigor even better.

Conclusion

We think that there has never been a better time to be a customer at Rigor. If your current monitoring vendor is giving you the cold shoulder, it might be time to check out Rigor. Set up a demo below to see for yourself!

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/rigor-shows-customers-love/feed0How to Get Ready for Google’s Speed Updatehttp://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/get-ready-googles-speed-update
http://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/get-ready-googles-speed-update#respondFri, 02 Feb 2018 16:42:43 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9920Google recently announced the launch of their Speed Update. This change to how Google ranks websites for searches will now take mobile page speed into account in its ranking algorithm. This announcement is part of a Google’s ongoing efforts to incentivize good web performance. It makes sense, because, as we’ve said in the past, good […]

]]>Google recently announced the launch of their Speed Update. This change to how Google ranks websites for searches will now take mobile page speed into account in its ranking algorithm. This announcement is part of a Google’s ongoing efforts to incentivize good web performance. It makes sense, because, as we’ve said in the past, good website performance has implications on user experience.

While the Speed Update won’t be in effect until July 2018, there are steps that companies can take now to make sure they are not penalized.

Get Familiar with your Analytics

Google won’t notify you if your ranking is dinged by mobile speed, but you will see the impact in your Google Search Console and your traffic.

You should have a good sense already from your analytics about who is coming to your site and through what mediums. Are most of your users via desktop or mobile? What percentage of your traffic comes from organic search compared to social media referrals or direct visits?

Getting a sense of your current traffic patterns can help you set a baseline. You can use this baseline to determine the potential impact your performance improvements.

Monitor Your Mobile Experience

Desktop users and mobile users have different experiences due to variations in device type, browser, and network conditions. Simply put, you cannot assume that testing and monitoring desktop performance will provide a sufficient picture of your mobile user’s experience.

It’s critical to test websites using mobile network conditions to accurately measure the site’s performance. Leveraging a feature like Filmstrips can also help by providing insight into what the user is actually experiencing while the page loads on both mobile and desktop. This data can help pinpoint what issues might be affecting your UX.

Prioritize Performance Improvements

Google’s Speed Update has made page load time a primary concern, but there are other aspects of mobile performance you should address, too. For instance, is your mobile experience user friendly, or can it be difficult to read or find content on mobile? Consider using a responsive design or a website design that is geared towards users on smaller screens. Here are a few other tips on how you can improve your mobile performance.

Consider Content

While content may not be king, it is important–both for delivering a good experience to users, but also for SEO. While speed influences rankings it isn’t the only factor. Search queries will still be a very strong factor, so high quality, relevant content will is also important.

Conclusion

As we’ve said before, SEO is a team sport. It is important for stakeholders across the business to understand the far-reaching implications of performance. Google’s Speed Update represents the latest in a push to incentivize speed. We know that load time impacts conversion rates, but its impact goes much further than that with ramifications for SEO and UX more broadly.

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2018/02/get-ready-googles-speed-update/feed0Not Fake News: Respecting Your Users’ Time Pays Offhttp://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/not-fake-news-respecting-users-pays-off
http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/not-fake-news-respecting-users-pays-off#respondThu, 25 Jan 2018 21:18:52 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9907Change is a constant for digital publishers. From Facebook reworking their News Feed (again) to show fewer posts from publishers to Google’s Speed Update including mobile load time in search rankings, the digital publishing industry has a lot to grapple with these days. Publishers don’t just need to worry about fake news, but also digital transformation […]

]]>Change is a constant for digital publishers. From Facebook reworking their News Feed (again) to show fewer posts from publishers to Google’s Speed Update including mobile load time in search rankings, the digital publishing industry has a lot to grapple with these days. Publishers don’t just need to worry about fake news, but also digital transformation and fierce competition for readers.

AsI think about the multitude of changes facing the publishing industry, there’s a common thread that we should not lose sight of: the importance of the user. Both of these high-profile announcements come from companies grappling with how to deliver a better user experience.

Digital publishers are wrestling with this, too.

A few months ago my colleague, Stephen Krauska, quoted Ben Frumin from The Week, saying, “Users will be endeared to your brand if they feel you are respecting their time.”

I think this concept of respecting your users’ time is helpful because it can be manifested in many different ways. Yes, respecting a user’s time means publishing accurate content, but it also means delivering that content in an expedient manner.

Here are three ways you can respect your users’ time:

1. Gain Visibility Into Your UX

To respect your users and their time, you must first understand what they experience when they visit your site.

Getting a sense of their current experience for key performance metrics, such as time to first byte or time to first ad, can be useful. Likewise, you can use Performance KPIs to track if your digital experience is improving over time. But, when performance degrades, you have to figure out why. Reading a waterfall diagram can help provide insight into what the browser was doing, but you are still trying to reconstruct what the user experienced by looking at a timeline showing when a browser requested and received content. What if you want an actual picture of how the browser loaded and rendered the page?

Filmstrips can help provide this visibility by capturing everything the user sees while the page is loading. This visual record of the page load is powerful because it gives you the insight you need to improve performance, pinpoint defects, and foster collaboration even with less technical team members.

2. Consistently Deliver High Quality Experiences–Especially on Mobile

I mentioned Google’s Speed Update earlier. This update to Google’s ranking algorithm will favor sites that deliver faster mobile experiences. According to findings from the Pew Research Center, 85% of U.S. adults access the news on their mobile phones, so your digital experience on mobile should already be a top priority.

If you need more evidence, consider that, according toGoogle’s analysisof over 10,000 mobile web domains, the average load time for mobile sites is 19 seconds over 3G connections. When you consider that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% will visit a competitor’s site instead, failing to prioritize mobile experience simply is not an option.

Measuring your mobile UX has some added complexities: namely network speed and latency. So, when you’re optimizing your site, make sure you are respecting the time of all your users–even those who are trying to get caught up on the subway. Use a monitoring solution with network throttling so you can control for network and latency. This will help you better identify and address the performance defects are degrading your mobile user experience.

Wondering how you stack up? Digiday compiled a list of the speediest sites in the game, as well as the low performers.

3. Get Your Third Parties In Check

Third parties and ad providers are tricky for publishers to deal with. On one hand, they provide valuable revenue, but they can also be a major drag on your performance. How does one reckon with these in light of “respect your users’ time”?

A good place to start is to get a handle on how many third parties are impacting your site–as well as identifying which are the biggest offenders when it comes to performance. We all know it isn’t reasonable to remove all third parties from your site, but once you have a good inventory you can determine if the performance pull is worth the value they are providing your company.

Recently, we helped an ecommerce customer with this process. In the process of re-platforming, they adopted a number of third party vendors, some of which were significantly pushing up their load times. When we ran tests excluding all third parties, their load time was 9 seconds less than when third parties were included. They had actually built a fast website, but it was being dragged down by vendors.

As a result of this data, their team could hold third parties accountable and make strategic decisions about if they should continue doing business with certain vendors.

Conclusion

One of the best ways to weather changes in the industry is to put a relentless focus on improving the user’s experience. Respecting your user’s time–both literally and figuratively–is a helpful way to conceptualize what a better user experience entails.

We know this is true because we see it work. For instance, many of changes made recently at the The New York Times to embrace digital transformation represent a more reader-first approach. Improving the user’s experience isn’t just good the right thing to do–it’s also good for business.

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/not-fake-news-respecting-users-pays-off/feed0How Rigor Helps Decrease Load Times and Increase Conversionshttp://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/how-rigor-helps-decrease-load-times
http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/how-rigor-helps-decrease-load-times#commentsFri, 19 Jan 2018 19:11:51 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9889I think we all know what poor website performance looks and feels like. It’s error pages, broken links, and ads that take over the whole screen. It feels frustrating, annoying, confusing, and makes browsing a burden rather than a pleasure. Because poor performance is so much easier to identify, it can sometimes be difficult to […]

]]>I think we all know what poor website performance looks and feels like. It’s error pages, broken links, and ads that take over the whole screen. It feels frustrating, annoying, confusing, and makes browsing a burden rather than a pleasure. Because poor performance is so much easier to identify, it can sometimes be difficult to conceptualize good performance, especially if the website simply fulfills your expectations. You get the content you are looking for, it’s easy, and painless. As with most things in life, it’s easier to identify when things go wrong rather than when they are working as they should.

There are exceptions, however. When a company makes an improvement in performance that is noticeable across the board. A performance improvement that leads to not just faster load times, but increased revenue. At Rigor we help both deliver and quantify performance wins. Here’s one example of how we delivered an 11% increase in conversions by improving a client’s performance.

One of Rigor’s customers, a U.S.-based $1 billion retail giant, let’s call them BBS, was struggling to adopt a culture of performance. They had conducted a site replatform over the summer that resulted in a spike in load time. The knew that their digital experience was lagging, but they didn’t know how to get back on track.

With the 2017 Black Friday code freeze looming in the near future and aggressive holiday revenue goals, BBS knew that they needed to take dramatic steps to improve their performance, specifically addressing their page load time. To kickstart their performance improvements, BBS partnered with Rigor’s professional services team.

Laying The Groundwork

For performance to be prioritized across the business, it must deliver real results. Our team worked with the performance champion to identify what their most pressing goals were, such as decreasing page load time. We created a step-by-step action plan, helped them implement the solution by working with them directly on a daily basis for two weeks, and measured the impact. Ultimately, our focus wasn’t just on helping them make the most out of Rigor, but also in creating a culture of performance.

Roadblock & Solution Number One: Culture

Our CTO, Billy Hoffman, likes to say that performance isn’t a coat of paint–you can’t just take a website and dress it up to make it fast and reliable. Similarly, you can’t just implement a performance monitoring software and expect to check off your performance box.

Performance is an ongoing event that consistently needs to be a priority if you want to stay ahead. #perfmattersClick To Tweet

Good performance is cultural, too. And culture was a major roadblock that we identified at BBS.

Leveraging performance software for its full potential doesn’t just mean setting up some tests and diagnosing failures. It means using it to create transparency and accountability around performance. We were able to help the performance champion at BBS use Rigor to demonstrate the impact of things like third party tags on performance. As a result, this created a starting place for improvement, a common starting place from which teams could work toward a common goal. We have seen similar outcomes in other customers, such as American Kennel Club.

Roadblock & Solution Number Two: Third Party Vendors

Speaking of third party tags, this is one of the most common culprits of performance spikes.

This was true for BBS, too. In the process of replatforming, they adopted a number of third party vendors, some of which were pushing up their load times. For instance, when we ran tests excluding all third parties, their load time was 9 seconds less than when third parties were included. BBS had actually built a fast website, but they were being dragged down by vendors. This is common, especially across ecommerce websites.

We identified which third party vendors were the worst offenders. BBS was able to use our data to hold these vendors accountable for fixes to both the tag itself and the calls it made back to the server. They could then determine which tags should be removed from the site entirely.

Roadblock & Solution Number Three: Performance Best Practices

We all know that we should eat our vegetables and exercise, but it can be difficult to translate that knowledge into action. Likewise, people oftentimes know performance best practices, but can have a hard time actually implementing them. Rigor helped BBS identify which best practices they should prioritize and held them accountable through weekly check-ins.

For instance, BBS was loading third party Javascript libraries before loading in all the CSS needed to render the page. This caused users (and Rigor’s monitoring tests) to see a blank white screen for up to 2 seconds at a time while waiting on the page to load. After testing a fix for this issue recommended by Rigor’s team on a single production instance, BBS was confident in the fix and rolled it out across the entire site.

Outcome

By identifying these roadblocks and helping BBS overcome them, we were able to deliver significant performance gains.

If you’ll recall, this was all part of an initiative to get their website in tip-top shape before the holiday shopping season. Ultimately, by implementing our recommendations, they were able to achieve a 5 second decrease in load time on their homepage. This coincided with an 11% conversion rate increase on Black Friday compared to the year prior.

Performance is not a finishable feature, and we are continuing our partnership with BBS to improve their performance. For instance, it’s important to ensure that they not only get fast, but also stay fast. For this we will be working to integrate Rigor earlier into their development lifecycle by conducting performance testing in pre-production.

We made significant gains, but for BBS–and other companies we work with–the single biggest roadblock they face is that fixes are hard to make when the code is already live. It is key that their team spot and address performance issues in pre-production before they post a threat to their user’s experience.

#WebPerf pro tip: Spot and address performance issues in pre-production before they post a threat to your #UX or your bottom line.Click To Tweet

This is a challenge Rigor is uniquely positioned to solve via our integrations with CI/CD pipelines and we will be partnering together to make it happen.

At Rigor we are serious about performance and committed to delivering real results for our customers. To learn more about how you can work with our team of performance experts, schedule a call with us here!

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/how-rigor-helps-decrease-load-times/feed15 Ways Rigor Develops Software with Business Users in Mindhttp://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/5-ways-rigor-develops-software-business-users-mind
http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/5-ways-rigor-develops-software-business-users-mind#respondFri, 12 Jan 2018 16:45:15 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9879From improving brand perception to conversion rates, website performance is a critical component of a company’s bottom line. This is why performance should no longer be viewed as just the engineering or development team’s job. Unfortunately, outside of Google Analytics many Marketers and Retailers have little to no insight into their site’s performance or how […]

Unfortunately, outside of Google Analytics many Marketers and Retailers have little to no insight into their site’s performance or how their content impacts site speed.

Traditional performance monitoring platforms are built for technical users. These tools are difficult to impossible for non-technical users to leverage to understand how content is impacting performance or what changes need to be made to optimize their site. Meanwhile, business users want to spend less time digging through data and more time making actionable plans to fix issues on their sites. Complicated software of the past that require downloads and interpretation of immense stores of data can get in the way of these actions.

At Rigor, our goal is to help all users deliver fast and reliable digital experiences for their end users, regardless of technical know how.

Here are 5 examples of how Rigor develops software with the business user in mind:

1. Actionable Insights with Step-by-Step Instructions

Optimization automates the steps a performance engineer would take to identify defects on your site and gives you easy, step-by-step instructions on how to resolve these performance bugs.

Know where to start to keep your sites fast and to make the biggest impact on the digital customer experience, allowing you to deploy updates with greater speed and confidence

2. Easily Assign Defects by Role/Department

One of the biggest challenges can be getting everyone on the same page. You could manually assign defects, or you could triage them with Rigor. Doing so can help unify your DevOps, business and marketing teams because everyone will be working off the same data and it will be clear who is responsible for what actions.

3. Visibility into 1st vs. 3rd Party Content

Third party content can oftentimes be a leading culprit of slow load times. You might know third parties are affecting your performance, but do you know the worst offenders?

The Content Explorer within Optimization provides this visibility. This interactive visualization tool can help you better understand the size, location, and makeup of all the content loaded by a webpage.

As a result, you can quickly identify oversized resources and third-party resources that may have been included unintentionally on a site and easily “drill down” on individual components to discover where the largest potential performance optimization gains can be made, download optimized versions, and learn more about the impact of related performance defects.

4. Visual Evidence to Provide Context for Data

Rigor’s new Film Strip feature provides a video recording of every run, capturing everything the user sees while the page is loading. This visual record of the page load makes it much easier to understand how changes to your site and key metrics impact what the user is experiencing. This enables you to more effectively respond to performance issues, as well as build a faster site.

5. Optimized Image Reports

Rigor Optimization allows users to optimize their images in one swipe. Users can then download the image and plug it into their site instantly. No degree in CS required!

Across the web, developers refer to image optimization as the “low-hanging fruit” because it’s an obvious, relatively easy performance problem to solve that makes a huge impact on site speed. Here’s an example of how simple image optimizations reduced page load time by 26%.

We know business users want concise, simple software that is powerful and easy-to-understand. Simplicity and user experience have become central to all SaaS companies as of late. SOASTA, now a part of Akamai, explains in greater detail the case for making site performance a priority not just for developers, but for the business managers and executives.

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/5-ways-rigor-develops-software-business-users-mind/feed0A Look Back at Rigor’s 2017http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/a-look-back
http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/a-look-back#respondWed, 03 Jan 2018 19:59:55 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9848As we kick off a new year at Team Rigor we are probably doing some of the same things as you–setting resolutions for 2018 while looking back at 2017. There are so many accomplishments that we are proud of (Inc. 500 list, anyone?), and we distilled some of our favorites below. Onwards and upward! 2017 […]

]]>As we kick off a new year at Team Rigor we are probably doing some of the same things as you–setting resolutions for 2018 while looking back at 2017. There are so many accomplishments that we are proud of (Inc. 500 list, anyone?), and we distilled some of our favorites below.

Onwards and upward!

2017 was a year of tremendous growth for us, both professionally and personally. We welcomed ten new employees, including our most recent hire, Chief Customer Officer, Francis Cordon, celebrated two weddings, and added five new, very small, Rigorians to our ranks.

Get Stuff Done

Building a fast-growing company takes communication, and lots of it. We depend on Slack to collaborate, dream big, and get stuff done.

MVP: Rigor Engineering

Our Engineering team went above and beyond this year. From decreasing our hosting spend significantly to releasing new features, such as Performance KPIs and Network Throttling, our Engineering team is the engine that drives Rigor.

Customers First

Our customers are the lifeblood of our business and the reason for our success, which is why we put an increased focus on putting our customers first in all that we do. We formalized this as one of our Core Values and hired a Chief Customer Officer to put it into action with our Client Success team.

Not only does our Client Success team write helpful articles for our Knowledge Base, but they also address any support issues that may arise, coordinate customer on-site visits, and ensure customers are implemented properly.

Living Our Core Values

Our Core Values permeate all that we do. Our quarterly retreats are an opportunity for us to #DoTheRightThing and give back to our community. This year we did everything from pulling weeds in Piedmont Park to organizing merchandise at the Lost and Found thrift store. For all the good we accomplished this year, we even made time to relax and enjoy perks such as massage days.

On the Road

Team Rigor spends a lot of time on the road. This year, our field marketing team stayed busy giving us many opportunities to interact with our customers both on the road and in our hometown of Atlanta. We are already planning our 2018 events; stay in the loop by subscribing to our newsletter.

Conclusion

We had a busy 2017, and we are excited about what is to come in 2018. If one of your New Year’s Resolutions is to make your digital experience a priority, reach out. We’d love to chat about how we can help you reach your performance goals!

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2018/01/a-look-back/feed0Why Web Performance Matters for Marketershttp://rigor.com/blog/2017/12/web-performance-matters-marketers
http://rigor.com/blog/2017/12/web-performance-matters-marketers#respondTue, 26 Dec 2017 15:55:10 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9856Around this time each year, a number of online retailers and marketers are impacted by high profile outages and website glitches. So, if you think that the performance of your website is just something for the tech team to worry about, let this serve as your reminder to think again. Slow website performance increasingly impacts […]

]]>Around this time each year, a number of online retailers and marketers are impacted by high profile outages and website glitches. So, if you think that the performance of your website is just something for the tech team to worry about, let this serve as your reminder to think again.

Fortunately, marketing managers and directors are increasingly tech-savvy. Even those who have non-technical backgrounds are involved in making decisions about website functionality, mobile app design, accessibility, and user experience. They understand the importance of a well-designed, usable website that’s easy to find.

However, there’s another critical, but less well-known, factor that has a direct, proven impact on the bottom line: speed. So, what’s the story with fast websites?

Why Performance Matters

Consumers who have to wait too long for web pages to load are less likely to convert. Website speed (or lack thereof)impacts a range of other business-critical factors, such as bounce rate, search ranking, and customer satisfaction.

“If no one complains about web performance, our performance is probably fine.”

The reality is, consumers rarely complain about poor performance…they just leave. A few hundred milliseconds can make a big difference between users hitting a back button or engaging with your content. Waiting time gives your visitors a chance to switch to another activity, or even worse, drives them to a competitor’s website.

Why Performance is Neglected

The factors responsible for slow web pages are often simple to fix. Yet marketers and product owners routinely ignore low-hanging fruit that could deliver a vastly improved online experience to customers.

Why might this be?

Lack of Ownership

Oftentimes, the barriers to fast websites are not technical, but cultural. Web performance is still relatively a niche disciple that tends to live at the technical end of the spectrum, so while a handful of companies are lucky enough to have developers who are passionate about performance, this isn’t the norm.

However, this does not give the business permission to ignore performance. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. That makes it even more important for the business to care about performance.

Without a clear champion, delivering effective and fast websites is always liable to slip down the list of priorities.

The people in the best position to change this are those at the top, who can initiate improvements in culture and process.

Developers might have the deepest insight into the website’s speed. But plenty of other stakeholders, such as marketers and designers, can impact performance. They too need to have a clear understanding of how and why it matters All this takes leadership, making operational changes that only those at the top of the organization are in a position to set in motion.

Uncertainty about Where to Start

Some companies that I work with know that they need to improve their performance, but aren’t sure where or how to start. This is why we recommend identifying easy performance wins to tackle first. There are a number of free tools, including our Free Performance Report, which can give you a high-level overview of priority defects.

From there, you can create projects around specific areas of your performance. For instance, you may recognize that you have a large number of mobile users, so it would be worthwhile to delivering a better mobile experience.

Unclear Expectations about Success

It can be daunting, especially as a business user, to advocate for performance if you aren’t sure about what success might look like. You could use a tool, such as Website Speed Ranker, to see that you are lagging behind your competitors and set a goal to make up the gap. Or, even better, you could identify performance KPIs that matter to your business, set a baseline, and make targets based on those numbers.

Conclusion

Increasingly, I’m working with marketing and digital business teams who know that performance is important but are unsure of how to go about improving it. It helps to understand why performance is neglected, so you can make a plan of attack.

From identifying and providing actionable insights performance defects to alerting you to outages, Rigor is here to help businesses make performance a priority. Interested in learning more? Schedule a call with a performance expert below!

]]>http://rigor.com/blog/2017/12/web-performance-matters-marketers/feed0Monitoring the Mobile Experience with Network Throttlinghttp://rigor.com/blog/2017/12/monitoring-mobile-experience-network-throttling
http://rigor.com/blog/2017/12/monitoring-mobile-experience-network-throttling#respondTue, 12 Dec 2017 13:44:31 +0000http://rigor.com/?p=9700Over the last months and years, mobile web usage has increased dramatically. In November 2016, mobile internet usage surpassed desktop usage for the first time, and this trend has only continued. You may have embraced mobile users by taking steps to improve their experience, such as optimizing images, caching resources, or adopting a responsive website […]

You may have embraced mobile users by taking steps to improve their experience, such as optimizing images, caching resources, or adopting a responsive website design. These are important steps to take, but does your monitoring strategy take into consideration the unique challenges mobile users face.

Desktop users and mobile users have different experiences due to variations in device type, browser, and network conditions. Simply put, you cannot assume that testing and monitoring desktop performance will provide a sufficient picture of your mobile user’s experience. It’s critical to test websites using mobile network conditions to accurately measure the site’s performance.

In this post, we’ll show why the mobile experience can be so different from the desktop experience, dispel common myths about the performance of mobile devices, and teach you how to get a holistic view of the performance and experience of all your visitors, regardless of device.

What Is Holding Back Good Mobile Experiences?

Historically, poor experience on mobile might have been blamed on devices. This argument doesn’t hold as much weight anymore, especially when you consider that smartphones, in some cases, are equal to or faster than a fairly modern desktop. For instance, the new iPhone X has a better Geekbench score than a MacBook Pro.

Unfortunately, for many users, a good mobile experience on their favorite websites remains elusive. So, if devices aren’t hamstringing mobile experience, what is? Oftentimes it’s the network speed and added latency. According to Google’s analysis of over 10,000 mobile web domains, the average load time for mobile sites is 19 seconds over 3G connections. When you consider that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% will visit a competitor’s site instead, failing to prioritize mobile experience simply is not an option.

How Network Connections Impacts Performance and Experience

Let’s see a real world example to better understand the impact network connection has on performance measurements. In the graph below we see the Time to First Byte (TTFB) for the same e-commerce site measured over a desktop cable mobile connection, a mobile LTE connection, and a mobile 3G connection.

The TTFB for the LTE connection is about 30% slower than the desktop connection. Even though LTE can be a fast connection with high bandwidth, mobile connections and the associated infrastructure of cell towers and networking equipment means mobile connections tend to have more latency than desktop connections. This effect is even more pronounced when looking the same site over a 3G mobile connection. In this instance, the TTFB is 3 times larger for 3G than a desktop connection!

How Slower Speeds and Higher Latencies Compound

Its also important to understand how slower download speeds and higher latencies can compound. Below, we see the Start Render time for the same e-commerce site loaded over desktop, LTE, and 3G.

The Start Render time for the site over LTE is 51% slower than over desktop (4.16 seconds vs 2.72 seconds). For a 3G connection, the Start Render time is nearly 6x slower than for desktop!

The reason for this is simple. Because mobile is slower, it takes longer to get the base HTML page. Which means that downloading things like CSS and fonts are delayed relative to a desktop connection. The delays snowball, so when JavaScript is delayed, the OnLoad event is also delayed. This of course further delays all the lazying loading for ads and pushes off the Visually Complete Time.

While you might have a LTE connection, you can’t assume that your users do. From visitors in rural America to global audiences in other countries, network connection can vary widely. Rather than testing performance under ideal circumstances alone, it’s better to understand how all users, rather than just a small subset with super fast connections, experience your site.

Network Throttling by Rigor

Given the importance of testing and monitoring mobile experience, Rigor is pleased to launch Network Throttling for Monitoring and Optimization. With this launch, all Rigor customers are able to test their websites under various network conditions.

By emulating both upstream and downstream speeds, Rigor customers can now hone in on performance defects that may degrade the user experience across a wider variety of connection types.

Since mobile experience is impacted by both speed and latency, we have added the ability to include latency, so you can pinpoint the impact of slow or distant connections. By default new tests will use a 20 Mbps Cable Modem connection, which is currently the average internet connection in the United States, according to research from Akamai. If you need more specific settings to better reflect the typical connections of your users, you can even define your own conditions.

You can learn more about how to set up Network Throttling in Monitoring and Optimization in our Knowledge Base.

Conclusion

Mobile Internet usage continues to be on the rise, so delivering a good mobile experience is essential for businesses who want to compete.

If you’re committed to delivering a good digital experience to your users, then you need to be able to emulate their experience as closely as possible. For mobile users this means that you need to be able to emulate their network connections so you can pinpoint defects that might be affecting them and make mobile-specific optimizations.

Rigor makes this easy with Network Throttling. If you’re ready to prioritize mobile performance and want to see Network Throttling in action on your site, book a demo below.